Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/25

 9*S.lV.j0LTl,'fl8.] 11 NOTES AND QUERIES. French I gather to exist from Dechambre's ' Dictionnaire Encyclop&Hque des Sciences Mddicales,'passim. Kumagusu Minamata. Waller (9th S; Hi. 165, 352).— Many, I should think, would agree with Mr. Auld that Waller will be remembered for more than the ode "Go, lovely rose," &c. The short poem referred to,' On a ■Girdle,' has a fine couplet, often quoted:— Give me but what this riband bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round. And, apart from his lyrics, his sacred poems contain some choice passages, particularly that at the close, which posterity will not willingly let die, embodying, as it does, one of the most striking metaphors in English poetry:— The seas are quiet, when the winds give o'er; So, calm are we, when passions are no more ; For then we know how vain it was to boast Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost. Clouds of affection from our younger eyes Conceal that emptiness which age descries ; The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light thro' chinks that time has made ; Stronger by weakness, wiser men become, As they draw near to their eternal home; Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view That stand upon the threshold of the new. Waller's spirited panegyric upon Cromwell who was remotely his kinsman, ought to be of special interest iust now. Of this Johnson says that it has always been considered the first of his poems. "Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, and all are musical." " Such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in the English language." Waller, in fact, is celebrated as one of the refiners of English poetry. Pope in one place com- mends his " smoothness," and in another his "sweetness":— And praise the easy vigour of a line Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join. I may here call attention to what seems to me a misapprehension on the part of Johnson. In his poem 'To the King on his Navy,' Waller writes:— Should Nature's self invade the world again, And o'er the centre spread the liquid main, Thy power were safe. In criticizing this Johnson says :— " In the poem on the Navy those lines are very noble which suppose the king's power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it were almost criminal to remark the mistake of centre for surface." But, if I am not mistaken, Waller by the "centre" here means the earth itself, which, according to the old astronomy, was the centre of the world, or universe ; and this Ptolemaic orthodoxy may be set off against that too prominent Copernicanism with which he is charged by Johnson in his song ' Stay Phoebus, stay.' That "centre" is thus used by the older poets is, I think, unquestionable. Shakspeare, in ' Winter's Tale,' II. i., makes Leontes say: If I mistake In those foundations which I build upon, The centre is not big enough to bear A schoolboy's top, where I take " centre" to mean " this vast central earth." So, again, in 'Troilus and Cressida,' I. iii.:— The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, where centre can only mean " this centric globe." Similarly, in Milton's well-known line,'P. L.,'i. 74, As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole, the "centre" is, I submit, the earth itself, a point in comparison with the whole celestial spnere, the pole of which, and not of the earth, is, of course, meant; so that we need not interpret it as meaning the earth's own centre. I may add that in George Herbert's poem ' The Search,' verse 2, the " sphere " and the "centre" correspond respectively to the "sky"and the "earth." In his interesting list of parallels Mr. Yaedley has not included the famous simile of the eagle viewing his own feather on the dart by which he was slain, found both in Waller and Byron, and ascribed to a Greek poet by Colton in his ' Lacon.' Perhaps, how- ever, this was too well known to be quoted. What is not, I believe, so frequently remarked, is that Wordsworth has utilized the end of one of Waller's songs for the beginning of one of his own shorter poems. Waller writes :— For all we know Of what the Blessed do above Is, that they sing, and that they love. And Wordsworth opens his lines entitled ' Scene on the Lake of Brienz' thus :— What know we of the Blest above But that they sing, and that they love ? Here, both in Moxon's edition, 1847, and in Knight's, 1884, marks of quotation are put but no reference to Waller is given. With Waller's character as a man this note is not concerned. C. Lawrence Ford, B.A. Irish Glibbes, or Coulins (9th S. iii. 449). —Halliwell, Nares, and Wright all describe glib to mean " a large tuft of hair hanging over the face." Neither gives the word